The Illusion of Control

He's in his early forties. The sun creeps through the trees and begins to vanish in a light cloud cover. Beside him stands a small boy, likely his son, sharing his gaze (albeit with an entirely different frame of reference), which bares down on a specific gravestone, by which a bouquet of varied flowers decorates.

He takes one last glance, turns, then walks away, his head down, his hands in his pockets, and his pace steady. The boy follows with a skip and a hop, appearing relatively unphased by the concrete slab sticking out of the ground...

~

She sits beside you. An attractive girl, seemingly intelligent, and in a place where the booze flows liberally and the depth of conversation flows conservatively, you have found the ideal balance of both. A slight spin begins to overtake your vision, and a slight slur begins to overtake your speech.

You ask if she'd like a drink. "I don't drink," she answers.

"Why's that?" You pry, flirtatiously.

" I don't like to lose control." Her answer....

Wait... Stop the music. Set the drinks down... What??

For some reason, at this moment in time, you remember the face of the man as he walked slowly away from the gravestone. At that moment you hadn't really thought of the significance of his facial expression, but in this moment, intoxicated at a party, you do. Because as the word "control" slips out if her mouth, your first thought is of what it actually means to possess it. What does it mean to have control?

Two human beings (that you don't get to choose) conceive a child. The child then inherits genetic traits (that you don't get to choose) while in the womb of the mother. It is born into living circumstances that it does not get to choose. It develops a personality and a consciousness that it doesn't get to choose. Its parents or guardian (depending on its circumstance) choose its food, source of education, and housing. They (or someone relevant) teach it their understanding of words like 'love' and 'God' and 'exist' and 'reality'. They even teach it the word 'control'.

Granted, at some point this child is allowed to make decisions. It can choose when to sleep, what to eat, what kind of car it wants to drive, what college it will attend, what color hair it wants to have, etc.  All these decisions give the child the idea that it is an individual and that it is independent. But to what extent are these decisions a direct effect of its genetics, its upbringing, the nutrients in the food that it eats causing unforeseen chemical reactions, the traffic on the road, or the weather causing said traffic? 

Infinite factors play into each decision that it makes, the majority of which it has absolutely no control over.

So here it is, in the form of an attractive, seemingly intelligent girl, sitting beside you at a party telling you 'I don't like to lose control.'

~

This man walks away from his deceased loved one with the expression of defeat on his face. Body language screaming out 'what happened?'. One second someone is there, the next they are gone. They're driving home from work and their car hydroplanes on the rain washed freeway, sending them into a head on collision. They develop cancer at the age of forty three and the chemo doesn't cut it. A gunman shoots up a strip mall when they're shopping for the perfect anniversary gift. Or best yet, time has finally taken its toll on them, and they slip away peacefully.

Anything you can imagine that's going through the mind of the man as he strolls slowly away from the gravestone is most assuredly a speculation, but the brevity of life and permanence of death are certainly conspicuous enough to cause the question to arise; at what point did you have control?

There is a thought that rather than an existence as an individual being, you are only a color on a canvas, or an expression of personality coming to a realization as to the limitations of the human body you have inherited. That you are an extension of a collective and all encompassing consciousness glowing with the power of love, fear, and creation. That you are not you, nor I, but we. That the control you have over your own existence is as premature and undeveloped as the understanding of your own capabilities. That there is a strange comfort in naivety, and that your perception of the reality you contrive throughout your existence on earth is only an illusion in comparison to the reality of existence itself.

Walking Dead

You sit at a stop light in the left lane with a car to the immediate right of you and two cars stacked behind you. The clouds slowly crawl across the sky, mirroring the pace that you crawl through your day. The driver of the vehicle to your immediate right stares off into the distance, likely thinking of something far more distant than what his eyes perceive. The car behind you rolls his window down, and you observe as he carries an angry telephone conversation regarding large amounts of money being owed to him. A young couple wait for the walk signal to herd them across the street . As it does, they walk, passing an elderly woman who walks by herself at a speed not much faster than a snail. She fumbles around four grocery bags and eventually drops them on the asphalt in the middle of the intersection. She once again gathers the groceries and slowly continues on her way.

You think to yourself "why has no one even once acknowledged this woman?" As the thought crosses your mind, it occurs to you that you still sit comfortably at the intersection, waiting for the light to turn green so that you can carry on living your mundane existence. 

It is estimated that 7.1 billion people occupy planet earth, the only known planet to support life. It is also estimated that in the existence of this planet, 108 billion people have lived in it, meaning that approximately 15% of the total population of earth is alive right now. You can almost consider, based on odds, that it is an extremely unique coincidence, borderline miraculous, that you sit at this stop light with these few individuals at this moment in time. But what's most astonishing about this particular moment that you all share is that, despite the odds of sharing any moment with any given conscious individual in your lifetime, not one person can step outside of their daily mold enough to assist an elderly woman in carrying her groceries down the street.

You scroll through Facebook or any given social media page and you mostly see the same things. People plastering the page with frustration towards people with opposing views, people sharing semi-funny memes about semi pertinent events, or people bickering back and fourth about extremely generic social matters that largely have no effect on any of their lives. It is an unlikely scenario to come across any good story. People talk about politicians, immigration, Bruce Jenner, his ugly female twin, etc., etc.

If you're lucky, you'll get 100 years on this earth. That's countless moments just like this one, and in all of those countless moments, how many times will you stop worrying about the evil in humanity long enough to help an elderly woman cross the street when she can't do it on her own? How many times did you create good? 

Not everyone is going to be the next Ghandi or Mother Teresa. Not everyone is going to feed the homeless, adopt a child or donate millions of dollars to starving children in Africa, it's just not realistic. That isn't, however, a valid excuse to not exercise common courtesy. Can we not find the time have good will towards others? Are we so numb to life that other people are no longer important? If the community is only as strong as its weakest members, how strong is your community? 

Maybe our community has lost touch completely. Maybe instead of seeing people, all we see are worn out faces. Maybe it isn't a community after all... Seems like it's time to stop worrying about science fictions portrayed of a zombie apocalypse, it's already here, and it isn't imaginary.

Even being one individual among 7 billion does not detract from your ability to help your fellow man. It's in each and every one of us to do the right thing at any moment, but quite often rather than doing the right thing or the wrong thing we do... nothing. How different is that from doing the wrong thing?